James 4: 7,8 “Resist the devil, and he will flee. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”
Lions in Africa have a particular strategy in hunting gazelle. The oldest male lion positions himself upwind of the herd of gazelle. He’s slow, weak and toothless, but still has an intimidating roar. The younger more agile members of the pack then sneak downwind and hide in the tall grass. Once all of them are in position, the old man lets out a mighty roar. The gazelles look up, catch his scent, and then flee in the opposite direction, right into the jaws of the hidden lions.
How often the devil seeks to make us flee by sowing fear. But as James wrote, the devil will flee as we resist him and face our fears. The devil seeks to imitate, so ‘he prowls around like an angry lion looking for someone to devour’ (1 Peter 5:7), but is no match for Jesus who is the ‘Lion of Judah’. So next time you hear the roar and feel your fears, don’t flee. Rather go for the roar, move through your fears and you will invariably discover that they don’t have as much ‘teeth’ as you thought they would.
As Eleanor Roosevelt wrote: “We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face … we must do that which we think we cannot.”
During the war in Burundi, I thought I would die at some point in an ambush. We regularly used roads that were considered to be the most dangerous in the world at the time. Many others died. But our task was urgent, it was worth dying for, and we faced those fears. One day my colleague looked across at me one time and said, with a glint in his eye: “Isn’t it exciting, we are immortal until God calls us home!”
You too can live free from fear. Face each one down, with the Lion of Judah at your side.
Lord, I choose to face my fears today. Amen!
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